Notes

Spare Keys
Evaleigh77

Summary:

A multi-year take on Tessa and Scott's fascinatingly weird and lovely relationship. Come for the angst and love scenes...stay for the Danny Moir cameos.
Notes:

I watch figure skating once every four years. I've never read or written fan fiction before (not counting Rainbow Rowell's excellent "Fangirl," which you should start reading right this instant if you haven't). This is some kind of fresh hell I fell into on Feb. 20, year of our Lord 2018. I've written short stories for years, so...this shouldn't feel as weird as it does, but yeah. These two people are just endlessly effing fascinating to me. Weirdly, I don't care that much about whether they currently are or aren't...whatever it is they seem to be. The aspect of their history I just needed to write out is how completely confusing and complicated and messy their relationship must have been at points over 20 years. And how, unlike many of us who had "serious significant others" in our teen years and early twenties, they couldn't just simply disconnect or grow beyond each other. That potential mix of commitment, fierce loyalty, genuine love (likely romantic and platonic), occasional resentment and (alleged!) lust was just...too much. I'm sorry, not sorry.
Chapter 1: Cliff-jumping

Summary:

“This feels like an abuse of my spare key,” she says, cocking an eyebrow. He doesn’t say anything for what feels like a long time, just keeps looking at her, his eyes moving slowly between her face, the tops of her breasts peeking out of her rumpled tank top and his feet.
Chapter Text
Canton 2007

The weed smoke is so thick in the living room, Tessa thinks she may be getting second-hand high. She makes her way through the clusters of sweaty bodies grinding on the makeshift dance floor in the middle of an apartment living room. In the corner, she sees one of the new single skaters (Victor? Vincent? What the hell is his name?) dancing with Tanith, while T-Pain’s “Buy you a drank” blasts through someone’s iPod.


She thinks she’s blocked the guy’s name from her brain because of the revolting way he’d adjusted his crotch while winking at her in the rink gym a few weeks back.


As Tessa tries not to stare, Guy Whose Name Begins with V begins sliding his hand up the front of Tanith’s skirt. Tanith’s head lolls back on his shoulder, eyes closed and face flushed.


Tessa’s stomach clenches in embarrassment. It also clenches in arousal, which honestly feels so fucking defeating.


Eyes determinedly forward and legs a little squishy from the shots of cheap vodka earlier, she makes what’s becoming her patented move during these new weekly Dirty Thursday Dance Parties. She goes in search of the one extra drink that will tip the balance between the fun, silly drunk version of herself and the one who is just too much, full stop.


Self-awareness is still on point, she says to herself smugly. Their mental prep coach would be so proud.


She rounds the corner into the kitchen, dimly wondering if she heard the blender earlier, and if that means Meryl is making Pink Panty Pulldowns (a never-ends-well concoction of cheap vodka and frozen pink lemonade concentrate).


Scott is perched on the countertop, hands gripping the edge, his upper body leaning slightly forward. He’s laughing at something someone must have said before she walked in, and in that moment, she thinks he looks like every good-looking male lead in
every cheesedick teen movie she’s ever seen.


The slow beat of the song bumps along in the background, as Tessa slightly moves her shoulders and hips with the music, heading towards the blender and the stack of red plastic cups. She feels Scott’s eyes on her back as she pours the last of the icy slush into a cup.


It’s hard to say what she’ll read on his face when she turns around. Amusement? Worry? Irritation? Reluctant lust? She’s experienced all four from him over the last few weeks. The first three are familiar to her. The last one makes her shake her ass a little more loosely to T-Pain.


“If you share your Pink Panty with me,” he says, smirking and kicking his foot towards her, “I’ll let you play DJ for the first hour of the drive home tomorrow.”


“Are you fucking kidding me?!” someone yells suddenly from the living room before Tessa can respond. “Who brought Twister?” The two college-aged guys in the kitchen with them stumble out, whooping loudly.


Tessa smirks back at him. “You don’t want my Pink Panty…you want to play Twister. I can see it in your face.”


He looks at her for a few seconds, chewing on the inside of his lip.


“Come here.”


“Why?” she asks, eyes narrowing.


“Why are you so difficult? Just come here.”


She shuffles towards him, stopping just short of where his knees are draped over the counter. He smells like Irish Spring soap, beer and cinnamon gum.


I want to climb him like a tree, she thinks without warning. And after a beat, I’m so, so screwed.


“Let me smell your breath,” he says, his mouth twitching at the corners.


“Do you lay in bed at night and think of new ways to be weird?” Tessa asks seriously.


Her hand tightens around her cup. She feels deflated for a split second because she thought this conversation was headed somewhere new. But, instead it’s taken a hard left into big brother-little sister town.


“Have you at least stuck to one liquor?” he asks, needling her. “Tell me you didn’t mix your brown and clear booze again like that night when…”


She flicks his knee cap hard. “I’ve stuck to vodka, thanks a whole bunch. And, as much as I enjoy reliving my drinking failures with you, I’m going to need you to zip it and remember who covered for you yesterday when you were late.”


He’d shown up to the rink 20 minutes behind schedule, out of breath and slightly sweaty. He’d also been sporting fingernail scratches on the back of his neck. His blasé attitude during the entirety of the practice made her feel distinctly 13 years old.


(During that practice, she had also worked her way down her new checklist of passive-aggressive behaviors that now seemed to appear when Scott had been with (or was planning to be with) his latest girlfriend. These included avoiding eye contact when possible, pretending to text furiously on her phone during water breaks and laughing with her face and not her eyes at his jokes. As they’re skating to the boards an hour in for a breather, he had asked her if she was upset about something. She patted his shoulder without really looking and told him she was just in the zone. The fact that he doesn’t seem to understand that she’s punishing him (or more to the point, why she’s punishing him) was maybe the most humiliating part of the whole pathetic cycle.)


“You know I’d cover for you too, whenever you needed,” Scott says, smiling and tilting his head slightly. “But, seriously. Since I’m driving you home in my truck tonight, I’m going to need proof you’ve stuck to our one-liquor rule. Your track record there is tragic. So, come here, and let me smell your breath, alright?”


Something about the way he says it, the way he’s looking at her – it makes her want to do really stupid things. Things that both sets of their parents, every one of their coaches since she was in grade 7 and the full retinue of their combined 28 siblings have all made abundantly clear are Not Worth The Risk™. (The most vocal among this set is Danny, Scott’s brother, who sat them down when they were 14 and 16 in Scott’s parents’ game room and told them with a completely straight face that, “Touching each other where you pee will literally ruin every-fucking-thing, and I’m gonna give you three reasons why.” Scott and Tessa had sat there mutely during this lecture, trying not to simultaneously die of awkwardness and/or laugh uncontrollably.)


In the crappy light of the kitchen, Tessa watches as Scott’s eyes repeatedly dart to her mouth, waiting for her to give in. She takes a big mouthful of Pink Panty Pulldown and swallows, keeping her gaze on his.


She slowly leans in until she’s a few inches from his mouth, and blows warm air out slowly, directing her breath towards his lips. She hovers there for a few seconds, feeling his indecision and her stupid, embarrassing hope collide in the space between them.


“See? Just vodka, like I said,” she says to smooth out the moment. “I always tell you the truth.” Tessa is concentrating on looking at a spot slightly over his left ear. She smiles again in his direction, takes another long pull of her drink and turns to leave.


She’s almost through the doorway when he says, “You know that I know that’s bullshit, right?” He says it quietly, almost rhetorically.


She pretends she doesn’t hear him, and he doesn’t follow her.


The Twister game is in full force in the living room. Apparently, someone had the bright idea to up the ante, and Tessa realizes a beat too slow that the game has morphed into strip Twister.


“Virtue…get your sweet ass over here and play,” slurs Fedor, Marina’s son and the resident heartbreaker of the rink. Fedor was her first real kiss, the first guy she slept with and truthfully, her first friend outside of Scott in Canton. It would be really, really easy to join the game and let him take her home and to his bed. If she thought he would listen to what she wanted while in that bed, she might consider it. But, she knows better. Fedor is about Fedor. And, he thinks foreplay is boring.


Hard pass, she thinks. I’m a fucking mess, but not that big of a fucking mess.


She winks at Fedor anyway to piss off Meryl, and spotting her purse shoved behind the recliner, grabs it and walks out the door. She’s not sure where she’s going, but she’s not playing strip Twister, and she’s sure as hell not playing mental Twister with Scott in his too-small truck cab.


In the parking lot, she sees Charlie standing by his car, packing a can of snuff against his palm and then pinching a dip into his lip. The weed, booze and various forms of nicotine were the open dirty secrets of a lot of the skaters in Canton. The high pressure to perform and stay thin were such a bitch. Case in point – a few weeks ago, Marina had “joked” about taking a marker and circling all of Tessa’s “jiggles” on her stomach and thighs if she didn’t stick to her training diet.


“Are you sober enough to give me a ride home?” she asks, moving towards the passenger side of his Honda.


“Yeah, no problem,” Charlie says, smiling sheepishly around his dip. “Sorry about this…just do me a solid and keep it quiet around Meryl. She kept texting me WebMD photos of lip cancer and photo shopped pictures of my face with half of my mouth missing, so I told her I quit.” Tessa snorts.


The ride home is quiet. She dozes until she feels the car slowing into her apartment complex parking lot.


“We’re here,” Charlie says, gently nudging her shoulder.


“Mmmhmm,” mutters Tessa sleepily. “Thanks for the ride.” She pats his hand clumsily and climbs out of the car, trudging up the stairs to her second-floor unit and digging her keys out of her purse. She unexpectedly remembers a conversation between her and Scott when they first moved to Michigan and began living on their own.


“You need to walk to your apartment with your keys in your hand, T. Hold your key between your pointer and middle fingers so you can…”


“Yeah, yeah. Shank someone in the eye if they come at me.” Tessa had rolled her eyes, as if bored with his worrying. But she secretly felt a swoop of warmth in her chest at how earnest he was about it all.


“Or the balls, Tess. Ball shanking is an underrated move, I think.”


Tessa slips the key between her fingers into position as she climbs the stairs. All of a sudden, she feels so tired. And ridiculously lonely. She unlocks both locks on the front door and then locks them back behind her.


She washes her face and brushes her teeth, examining her reflection in the mirror. It won’t always feel this way, she remembers her sister telling her a few months ago. After a couple of glasses of red wine, she had admitted she was afraid of how she felt sometimes around Scott – how she’d felt since she was 15, if she was really telling the truth.


Climbing into bed, she leans over, plugs in her phone and dutifully sets her alarm. She closes her eyes and falls into the kind of heavy sleep only cheap liquor can give.


Tessa doesn’t know what time it is when she hears someone (something?) moving by her bed. She sits bolt upright and draws in a deep breath to scream.

“Oh God, no, T…it’s just me!” Scott whisper-yells, reaching out his hand to touch her shoulder. “It’s just me,” he repeats again in what he probably thinks is a more soothing tone of voice.


“What’s wrong?” she mumbles incoherently. “Are you sick? Or drunk?” She pauses for a second, feeling more awake. “Or both?”


She flicks on her bedside lamp, washing the room in soft yellow light. She blinks up at him, sees him standing there awkwardly, holding her spare key on his keyring, shifting his weight from foot to foot. In the ways that count, he looks the same as when she first met him at 9 years old – sweet but also like he knows he’s slightly full of shit and pleased about it.


“This feels like an abuse of my spare key,” she says, cocking an eyebrow. He doesn’t say anything for what feels like a long time, just keeps looking at her, his eyes moving slowly between her face, the tops of her breasts peeking out of her rumpled tank top and his feet.


She feels the air between them solidify – like in the kitchen, except thicker this time.


Fuck this, she thinks suddenly. I’m not going first.


Without a word, she reaches over and flips the lamp off, returning the room to complete darkness. She doesn’t hear him move at first. But then comes the sound of his jacket hitting the floor and his shoes and keys thumping against the leg of her desk.


He climbs on the bed, sitting with his back against the headboard, knees pulled up. She feels his hand moving on top of the covers, looking for hers.


“I’m not sure what to do, Tess,” he says finally, his voice so quiet in the dark. “You get that I don’t know what the fuck to do here, yeah?”


She doesn’t say anything, just stares at the ceiling and tries not to have a panic attack.


He turns to look at her in the dark. “This feels like I’m holding a gas can over a blowtorch and hoping for the best.”


Tessa lifts her arm from under the covers and slides her palm on top of his hand, lacing her fingers through his. She doesn’t speak for a minute, just squeezes his hand and scoots up so she’s sitting shoulder to shoulder with him. Slowly, as if she’s a wild animal he’s trying not to startle, he moves his hand from under hers and pulls her gently until she gets the hint and moves to sit between his legs, leaning so that her back is resting on his chest.


This is the way you hold someone when you have feelings for them, she thinks.


Scott lowers his face until his cheek is next to hers. She feels him turn slightly and inhale in the spot where her ear and neck meet and mutter, almost resentfully, “Why is your smell like crack to me?”


Something inside of Tessa’s gut just snaps.


She shifts up and pulls her tank top over her head. Then, without turning to look at Scott, she lifts her hips and pulls her pajama shorts off in one fluid motion. She can hear his breath catch, as he realizes what’s happening.


“I don’t want to overanalyze this moment, Scott.” Jesus, her voice sounds like sex – rough and throaty. She feels halfway proud, halfway self-conscious. “I just want to…do.”


“You want to do…what?” he asks, not teasing or coy, but quiet and serious. He leans his face back in, moving his parted lips up and down her neck, not kissing her exactly, but not…not kissing?


She formulates several answers and discards them one by one. In the end, she just says, heartbeat thundering in her ears, “I want to do everything with you.”


Later on, months (really, years) after this night, she will realize that this is the biggest understatement she’ll ever utter out loud in her life. Forever and ever amen. The end.


He turns her face with his hands and looks at her for a few seconds. Then their mouths meet – all soft lips and light teeth until she begins to lick into him because she feels like her head might explode from the want.


He spins her around so that they’re facing each other now, chest to chest, her legs wrapped around his hips as he pushes against her. It’s just not enough, she thinks desperately.


Without really hesitating, she breaks away from him and lays back on the bed, knees bent and open so that she’s bare in front of him.


“God, Tess,” he says, his voice raspy, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “Just…God.”


Later, as his head moves rhythmically between her legs, his hands reaching up to pinch her nipples, she thinks that this might be the most erotic moment of her entire life. She holds both of her palms to the sides of his head and watches in a haze as her hips ride his mouth. He mutters curse words while she comes all around him, his tongue and lips working her through the high. Heart still hammering, her head swimming, he firmly flips her over flat on her stomach, his hands palming her ass and parting her in the best and dirtiest way possible.


This is what sexually peaking at 19 feels like, she thinks dazedly.


He stills behind her. “Is this ok, T? Do you want to stop here?”


She thinks her teeth are chattering even though she isn’t cold.


“Do you want to stop?” she asks, while chanting in her head, please say no, please say no, please say no.


“I just want to do what you want…and only what you want.” And then, after a pause, “Whatever that is.” And she suddenly realizes that maybe he’s no longer just talking about sex.


“I want you inside me,” she whispers, face burning, half buried in the wadded blankets. “I’m clean and on the pill,” she adds quickly. Her right arm reaches back to touch his thigh as he kneels behind her. “Please, Scott.” Her voice shakes a little.


He answers by leaning forward and running his pointer and middle finger along the crease of her mouth gently a few times before pushing them inside. She laps her tongue over both, sucking and bobbing on his fingers until she feels his legs trembling where they’re pressed against the inside of her calves.


She looks back as he takes his glistening fingers and pushes them gently inside her, slowly working in and out of her with a rhythm that just feels mean-spirited in its teasing. He leans down, while she watches over her shoulder, and gives her one slow deep lick along her opening, before lifting her hips slightly and thrusting inside.


As it turns out, one of Tessa’s secret assumptions about Scott is absolutely correct. He fucks like he dances, rather than like he skates. He’s precision, deep edges and flawless blade control in skates. But his dancing is raw, loose and instinctual. That’s what tonight feels like to her. He knows how to make her feel good instinctually. And as she thinks this, she realizes that she, like him, is no longer just talking about sex.


As he moves again and again inside her, driving her hips into the bed at an angle, he reaches down and begins to rub small circles above the cleft of her ass. His fingers slip slide in the crease, a few beads of sweat rolling down him and onto her.


She pulls her knees up so that she’s on all fours and slips her hand between her legs, rubbing while he continues his pace. He grits out, “I want you to come again, Tess.”


He drives into her, and she drops her head and cries out, devoutly glad that the unit next to her bedroom is unrented at the moment.


When she reaches back and cups him underneath, rolling him gently in her palm, he moans something unintelligible (later, Tessa thinks it sounded like “you’re perfect” but talks herself out of it) and then thrusts one last time. He drapes himself over her back, his cheek resting between her shoulder blades, and gently rubs his nose against her, making her ache in the best and worst way.


He peppers soft kisses there, before joking that he’s probably crushing her to death and flopping on his back next to her.


They lay quietly, listening to the sounds of the highway in the distance and the whir of the heater as it kicks on. He swings around so that his head is resting on her lower back as he looks at the ceiling.


“I want to say a million things right now,” he says after a while. She’s felt him start three or four sentences before letting his breath out slowly each time. “But everything sounds like not enough and too much in my head.” He laughs quietly, reaching up to brush her sweaty hair off her face.


“I know what you mean,” she says. But she thinks, I love you. I’m terrified of you. I’ve hated every one of your girlfriends. She thinks these thoughts in that precise order.


Before she can second guess herself, she steels herself to say what she must – words to help fuel the self-preservation she’s going need to move past the fact that they have now touched each other where they pee, and it was fucking fantastic.


Because the truth is – she’s 18 and he’s 19, and what does she expect this could mean really at this point?


This is how Tessa is different than her friends back home. She is ruthlessly practical, disciplined and almost unhealthily goal-oriented. Later she will realize that these qualities, in combination with drilling romantic intimacy with Scott on ice every day since the age of 7, makes for a deeply (deeply) fucked up situation.


“Ok,” she says starting again, forcing her voice to be light. “No analysis, yeah? Let’s sleep, and I’ll set my alarm for 15 minutes earlier so we can grab coffee on the way to the rink.”


Scott sits completely still for a few seconds, his expression in profile unreadable. When she realizes his face is methodically closing off, she feels like someone is slowly squeezing a vise around her chest. She’s never watched someone she loves compartmentalize hurt in real time – it makes her feel sick.


Before she can say something to try and undo the last 30 seconds, he sits up, and smiles at her with his face and not his eyes. He leans forward and pats her leg in a way that seems like Morse code for, I have a girlfriend anyway.


“I’m going to try and catch a few hours in my own bed,” he says, rolling off smoothly and grabbing his jeans off the floor. “I’ll be here 15 minutes early though, no worries – coffee is going to be essential.”


They put the rest of their clothes back on more slowly than they ought to, though, each of them stealing furtive glances at the other, like they’re both trying to commit everything to memory. He says goodbye two or three more times using different words before she hears the front door close and the sound of the locks clicking back into place with his spare key.


Tessa lays back down and rolls into the middle of the bed on her back, pushing her arms and legs out like a snow angel, just trying to be – to not think. Sticky wetness seeps from the sheet onto her tank top, and she reaches back to touch it, twisting and lifting the fabric to her nose. The tangy, salty scent is recognizable instantly. Her gut twists.


And then she starts to laugh. (And let’s be honest – she cries too. And not gentle crying. Ugly-ass crying. Headache in the morning, eyes of death crying.) Literally, and metaphorically, she’s landed smack dab in the middle of the wet spot.